واقع گرایی

This article makes no claim to originality -neither in terms of content or thesis, nor in proposing a new scientific curiosity or addressing a pressing issue. Rather, it attempts to rearticulate the clear and established principles of one branch of knowledge (namely philosophy) in a simple and minimal wording for the benefit of another branch (namely sociology), which typically lacks such foundations and only engages with them out of necessity or practical demand. This effort is pursued through a periodization and review of epistemological developments, framed around one of the most significant dualities in this field, i.e. object and subject. By tracing their often divergent ups and downs, the article offers a brief account of the major schools of thought and theories, along with a concise comparative analysis. The outcomes can assist sociology and other branches of the humanities in engaging with specialized epistemological debates more thoughtfully and with a commanding view at their deep-seated literature.

The expansion of legal relations in societies and the inadequacy of laws make the necessity of interpretation more prominent. This has led legal doctrine to outline different approaches to interpretation. The realist approach to interpretation considers judicial justice to be the implementation of the right as it is, evaluating each issue based on its criteria and not considering laws to have generality over all issues and subjects. On the other hand, legal dogmatism considers the sole duty of the judge to be the application of the law and measures judicial justice based on its observance. The intellectual orientation of each of these schools of thoughts’ interpretation can lead to the creation of different judicial procedures in similar cases. Accordingly, the current research, using a descriptive-analytical method, examines the schools of thoughts in the interpretation of laws and their application in Iranian private law. The results indicate that private law in the Iranian legal system, like other parts of Iran’s law, follows the Constitution. Accordingly, considering Principle 167 of the Constitution, the authenticity of the content of text is a legal principle in Iran’s law, and the judge or legal scholar must consider the text of the law. However, in Iran’s private law, although the text of the law seemingly has authenticity, nor does it mean that the judge is limited to interpreting the words of the law. In the Iranian private law, the law clearly specifies the probative force of evidence; otherwise, the natural principle inherent in judicial competence is the judge's freedom in evaluating evidence. Therefore, from the legislator's perspective, in various cases, referring to considerations outside the law has been the criterion for determining the verdict, and also in some cases, interpretation should be based on external criteria, such as referring to custom regarding the determination of a wife's alimony and etc. However, in some cases, it has left the determination of the source and limits of interpretation to the interpreter or judge, so that justice becomes the dominant aspect of the verdict.

Roman Ingarden a Realist phenomenologist grounded his phenomenological thought on aesthetics. However, Ingarden's concern was not to explain a merely aesthetic philosophical system but to oppose Husserl's Idealism. How does Husserl's transcendental Idealism explain the existence of the external world? Ingarden does not find Husserl's answer convincing and meanwhile, Ingarden expands his reflections from a general ontological project to ontologies focused on different art forms. He shows that ignoring the existential structure of objects, the difference in the way of giving, and the contribution of their mode of existence in the Idealistic approach, cause many problems that are incompatible with the whole of Husserl's philosophical system, and these problems are not overlooked. For Ingarden, the real world is an existential object at the highest level. Therefore, Ingarden proposes a distinct solution to the controversy by distinguishing consciousness from the real world as two separate existential fields and focusing on the intentional aesthetic object that refuses idealism or realism contradiction. Ingarden analysis shows that, as Husserl says, if the existence of the world of experience is completely intentional, it still cannot be said that everything that exists is a result of consciousness. In other words, the aesthetic description of the purely intentional object and reflection on the metaphysical qualities of the work of art through research into the schematic structure of the work and the aesthetic experience resulting from the concreteization of the work of art is the path that keeps Ingarden in the realistic direction of balancing the Idealism/Realism controversy.

Scientific theology is one of the new trends in Christian theology, which believes that the only way out of theological challenges is to get help from science. British theologian and biochemist Arthur Peacocke is one of the thinkers who presented a plan for scientific theology, and the main issue of this paper is what are the characteristics of scientific theology from his point of view and what are the criticisms of it. To answer this problem, the descriptive-analytical method is used and the purpose of such discussions is to be able to benefit from the experiences that Christian theologians have had against new theological challenges. Referring to Peacocke’s works makes it clear that his scientific theology is mainly based on scientific findings and from his point of view, theological beliefs should be reviewed in the light of scientific findings. He also uses the inference of the best explanation as a method and realism as the basis of science in theology to reach intersubjective and scientific theology. One of the problems of Peacocke's scientific theology is that scientific findings are not certain and stable, and tying theology to them will result in fleeting theology, which will not be desirable. This problem is even related to the use of reasoning and scientific basis.

This paper scrutinizes William Lane Craig’s perspective on the relationship between religion and ethics. According to Craig, knowledge of moral values and obligations is not inherently tied to theism, as he posits that God has embedded moral obligations within the human heart. However, in terms of ontology, Craig contends that theism provides the best explanation for moral realism. Atheistic realists, in avoiding the naturalistic fallacy, are urged to conceptualize moral properties as abstract Platonic entities akin to numbers and propositions, a stance unnecessary within the theistic framework where God, a concrete entity, serves as the supreme good and ultimate source of moral goodness. Critically assessing Craig’s viewpoint, the paper contends that 1) real property should not be conflated with an essential constituent. Drawing on Moore’s perspective, moral predicates are construed as second-order philosophical concepts inherently tied to the existence of subjects. 2) By centering on the existence of “moral evil,” Craig’s argument can be inverted, providing grounds for an argument supporting the existence of Satan. 3) The consequence of Craig’s argument is the negation of any moral obligation for atheists. 4) Positing obedience to God’s command solely for its own sake as irrational, Craig’s argument may potentially exhibit circular reasoning.

Examining the meanings of "realism" and "relativism" shows that not every realism is positive, nor is every relativism negative. Realism has two existential and epistemological meanings, just as relativism can be raised in the ontological and epistemological discussions. On the other hand, I'tibari (mentally-posited concepts) has at least four meanings: I'tibari versus real, I'tibari against genuine, I'tibari as dependent entity and I'tibari as practical consideration. Although, Allameh Tabatabaii's theory of "i'tibariyat" is reckoned as one case meaning of relativism, it is irrelevant to relative ethics, because it concerns ontology and causal relation. Even if we propose it in the field of epistemology, because "i'tibariyat" is tied up with a reality called "perfection" and "happiness" of man or "proximity to God", all voluntary acts of man, provided in accordance with real perfection, will be valuable. Such knowledge also exists in the innate nature of all human beings as an original, general and stable knowledge; Allameh Tabatabaii will thus be among the realists and supporters of the absolute ethics theory. By a close look into Allameh's theory of "i'tibariyat" from one side, and into the meanings of relativism and realism from another side, one may say that his theory of "i'tibariyat" is not purely mentally posited, rather it has a root in reality somehow.

According to the “No Miracle argument” (NM), science’s predictive and explanatory success would be a miracle if the unobservable entities postulated by them did not exist; that is, if successful scientific theories were not approximately true descriptions of the world. On the contrary, according to “the Pessimistic Meta-Induction argument” (PMI), there is no relation between the success of a theory and its truth. To justify PMI, Larry Laudan provides a long list of past successful and yet false theories, which have been abandoned today. In this paper, first, the two arguments of NM and PMI are explained briefly. Then, it will be shown that the essential realists’ solutions to PMI cannot rebut this argument decisively. The paper concludes that the common problem of all these solutions is their non-referential approach, i.e., they do not demonstrate that the central terms of many past successful and yet false theories are still somehow referential.

In this paper, my aim is to clarify McDowell’s chief objections to Kripke’s reading of Wittgenstein presented in his well-known book, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982) and then to introduce and explain McDowell’s own interpretation of Wittgenstein’s main remarks on meaning and rule-following. Finally, I argue that McDowell’s construal of Wittgenstein, contrary to what he claims, does not significantly depart from Kripke’s. For McDowell, Kripke has only focused on the first part of section 201 of the Philosophical Investigations, where Wittgenstein states that “This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule. The answer was: if everything can be made out to accord with the rule, then it can also be made out to conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here” (Wittgenstein 1953, §201). McDowell’s main objection to Kripke, among other objections, is that Kripke has failed to successfully capture the main point of Wittgenstein’s remark presented in the second part of section 201, according to which “It can be seen that there is a misunderstanding here from the mere fact that in the course of our argument we give one interpretation after another; as if each one contented us at least for a moment, until we thought of yet another standing behind it. What this shews is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call ‘obeying the rule’ and ‘going against it’ in actual cases” (Wittgenstein 1953, §201). Wittgenstein’s suggestion seems to be that there is a way in which a grasp of meaning is not an interpretation at all.McDowell then proposes his own take on these remarks and argues that once we see the practice of rule-following as an activity which is already rule-governed in a community, we can with no harm take it to form a (normative) fact about what the speaker means by her words. This means that Kripke has gone wrong in arguing, on behalf of Wittgenstein, that there is no such fact. More particularly, “shared command of a language equips us to know one another’s meaning without needing to arrive at that knowledge by interpretation, because it equips us to hear someone else’s meaning in his words” (McDowell 1984, 350-351). Within such a linguistic community, there is a capacity for “a meeting of minds” (1984, 351) so that each member can hear what the other means by a word directly. For, the members of such a community have been trained similarly in a community of speakers, whose responses are already meaningful, whose world is already conceptualized, and whose rules are already determined. However, once we carefully read McDowell’s own interpretation of Wittgenstein, we can see that Kripke’s reading is not in any serious conflict with it. Not only this, but Kripke seems to have been aware of the issues McDowell raises and attempted to deal with them. McDowell takes the meaning facts to be constituted by certain communal facts but does not want to subscribe to a reductionist view of meaning. For that reason, he then treats such facts as primitive, irreducible to any other fact about the speaker. But, in Kripke’s remarks, we can find no conflict with this. For Kripke too, Wittgenstein does not deny the legitimacy of ordinary uses of terms like “truth”, “fact”, and the like. On the contrary, Kripke emphasizes, like McDowell, that once we are free of the regress of interpretations, we are fully entitled to use these terms in relevant language games. Moreover, Kripke’s Wittgenstein too sees membership in a community as an essential aspect of the rule-following practice. In the present paper, I discuss these claims in some detail and show that McDowell does not dramatically depart from Kripke in his interpretation of Wittgenstein.

Future studies as an efficient tool, in analyzing the trends and factors affecting the rapid changes of social phenomena, draws probable future scenarios. By analyzing the sources, patterns and factors of change and stability, this approach puts new horizons of the future in front of us (exploratory futures) and outlines the requirements to achieve it (normative futures). In the meantime, Islamic humanities have not benefited from this future research capacity and in this research, we are going to examine the research process of one of its examples, that is, Islamic management. In this article, two frameworks are presented for preparing the research scenario: the first scenario focuses on security, avoiding adverse consequences and fulfilling obligations. And the second scenario of research is done in the framework of the existing knowledge of management, considering the necessary changes. The first one deals with the research in management with adaptation under the existing structure of management knowledge while making changes and the second one not under the existing structure of management knowledge but with a new form. This study helps the researchers to adopt a revolutionary strategy in the field of adaptation or formation, considering the future developments.

In this article, by analyzing the opinions of Avicenna and Moore, about the indefinability of good and bad morals, their attitude is explained from the epistemological point of view, The main problem of the research is Avicenna and Moore's attitude about criticizing the naturalistic criterion and criteria for carrying moral characteristics such as good and bad in moral issues. Avicenna states in his opinions that moderation as a metaphysical and natural matter cannot be a criterion for the good or badness of moral issues in all fields, and Moore, by analyzing the naturalistic fallacy, considers pleasure or harmony with nature as the criterion and criterion for carrying good and bad. He does not know moral issues. The results of the research show that the approach of these two thinkers to prove their claim is to pay attention to the logical problem that occurs in the comparison of knowing good and bad with things such as moderation, pleasure, and harmony with nature. To answer the problem, Avicenna and Moore defend the non-naturalistic realism of moral propositions, in the meantime, emphasizing the intuition of the characteristics in the intellectual intuition of the people to find criteria and criteria for the truth and falsity of moral propositions makes it possible to discuss the opinions of these two thinkers. The research method is to analyze the content of the opinions of these two philosophers in order to create a dialogue to compare their opinions.

In "Value and Virtue in a World Without God," Weillenberg considers naturalism as an atheistic account of the universe. He first introduces the meaninglessness of life in the absence of God with four narrations and then challenges it with the help of three perspectives. He then goes on to find ways to ontologically base morality on religion and tries to show that these ways are dead ends. In this book he does not clarify his alternative view, but in the book "Strong Ethics", it is revealed that he is a naturalist. In response to the question why should one live morally? It wants to show that there is a possibility of moral motivation apart from God, although God can also be a good supporter of morality. In introducing virtues into his proposed ecosystem, he is no longer content with merely presenting a positive view, and seeks to show that some virtues are born in the absence of God, or at least have a deeper meaning. The most important criticism of him is the identification of theism with being a Christian.

Moral realism is one of the most important approaches in meta-ethics. Accepting this approach or denying it has a unique role in the intellectual system of a moral philosopher. Louis Pojman, an eminent American philosopher, is one of the most important defenders of moral realism. He believes that skepticism and moral nihilism represented by Mackey and Harman are the most important attacks on moral realism, and if realism can be safely passed through these two scientific paths, this important ethical approach can be easily accepted.  In this article, after presenting Mackie's two fundamental arguments that is, reasoning through relativity and queerness, we try to show the inadequacies of his argument according to Pojman's point of view. In the following, we discuss the inefficiency of Harman's anti-comparison hypothesis and reveal how moral realities exist, and finally, we discuss Pojman's approach in defense of moral realism.

In light of the technological advancements and the digitalization of information, a new realm of "Being" -which is called "cyberspace" - was created by the attempt of modern humans, which while being based on the material world, flows in parallel to it and creates the subsist of the modern human's second world. Reflecting on the position and dignity of this space in the universe and its ontological characteristics appears to be one of today's research necessities. The ontology of cyberspace, which is one of the theoretical studies in this field, can have a decisive role in identifying our mentality and intellectual and behavioral bias in interacting with this space. The current research has explained the existence of cyberspace and its most important ontological characteristics with a library method and a philosophical and intellectual approach. The current research findings are: firstly, the objects in cyberspace are "real", not imaginary and delusional; secondly, they are a kind of "objective existence"; thirdly, they have a "similar to suspended forms" entity and fourthly they are a kind of the real existence not mentally posited. Also, since cyberspace nowadays has invaded and dominated the previous realms of Being, this space has outcropped as "Hyperreality". Finally, the most important ontological characteristics of cyberspace are being digital, the relative eternity of time, the missing link of space and time, and the case of borderless space, virtual memory, being hypertext, being networked and interactive.

Tabatabai and Motahari consider Sadra's philosophy to be a realistic philosophy and claim a kind of realism in the book "Principles of Philosophy and the Method of Realism". Ilham Dilman also believes that Wittgenstein's rejection of realism does not make him an idealist. Rather, Wittgenstein is also considered a realist in a sense. This article examines and compares the realism proposed in "Principles..." on the one hand and the realism that Dillman attributes to Wittgenstein on the other hand.

The concept of reality is one of the challenges we are concerned about nowadays in the philosophy of physics. In fact, this challenge has risen with the advent of quantum mechanics, a challenge that frustrated Einstein with quantum mechanics, of which he was a co-founder, and led him to consider it incomplete (EPR, 1935). According to Einstein, due to this "incompleteness", quantum mechanics -in addition to the standard variables- needs complementary variables that are hidden. These kinds of hidden variables theories are not discussed here. The purpose of this paper is to study the concept of reality in standard quantum mechanics that considers its dominant interpretation, i.e. the Copenhagen interpretation with the principal contribution of Bohr and Heisenberg. This interpretation is very close to logical positivism and the Vienna circle; but it is not. Therefore, in this article, we will examine the views of Bohr and Heisenberg and scientific positivism and their interpretation of "reality." There are elements of reality that are not affected by our knowledge, they have been criticized by empiricist and positivist philosophers, who believe that in any case "physical reality" cannot be more than what we know about it and we are talking about it. This interpretation of "reality" which is based on intersubjectivity, in the second half of the twentieth century, has been influential in other sciences from chemistry to literature and has become a paradigm, also it has affected the human mind. In modern social science "construction of social reality" can be made by something that everyone knows or a "collective intentionality". In reality, this criterion leads humans to the creation of "hyperreality" -a valid forgery or a copy without origin- instead of "reality". "hyperreality" is defined as the conscious inability to distinguish between "simulation" and "reality", especially in advanced postmodern industrial societies, where reality and imagination are entangled and indistinguishable (Baofu, 2009).

Method of Study: 

A comparative method has been used between physics and social science to show how the concepts and paradigms in physics could affect the human mind.

As a result of this research, base of some misconceptions in the modern era have been extracted and also shown their effects, for example, bliss is misunderstood, and a high rate of suicide in modern countries is a consequence of it.

Although quantum mechanics has had experimental successes, its interpretations have fundamental and unanswered problems, and these two (experimental successes of quantum mechanics and interpretations) are two completely independent and separate things that it is wrong to equate them. This mistake has led to the authenticity of anti-realist philosophies. Thus, "weak objectivity" has become the criterion of all reality. The requirement of weak objectivity is communicable", that is, the reality is intersubjective. Hence, in science, "communicability" is the measure of existing scientific reality. Regarding this definition of scientific reality, for example, the media can construct a "social reality" in what is made as "collective intentionality" which is not real, it is a "hyperreality".

McNaughten is among the thinkers who pay attention to moral motivation in his analysis of the causes of moral weaknesses. In this field, he explains the views of realism and Non-cognitivism, and by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of their views, he points to his own point of view. McNaughton believes that realism as presented by their supporters and Non-cognitivism cannot explain the motivation as well as the causes of moral weaknesses. According to McNaughten, moral requirements are independent of desires; Because their existence and claim in giving a reason to do the action is not the will of the subject; Rather, it depends on his understanding of the situation and only a cognitive understanding of moral motivation can provide this understanding of moral obligation. McNaughton believes in a kind of realism that leads to moral particularism, and based on that moral motivation and even the causes of moral weaknesses should be measured based on the situation in which the act occurs. In addition, he considers the influence of moral principles to be insignificant; This is while the problem of justification raised in Non-cognitivism still remains if moral principles are ignored. In fact, in the analysis of moral weaknesses, McNaughton points to two types of limited understanding and general understanding of the situation and believes that in a limited understanding of the person's situation, he acts in his interest. In contrast, in the general understanding of the situation, the person behaves in such a way that he deserves to be called a virtuous person, and such an understanding of the situation is difficult to achieve.

Structural realism is one of the influential views in the contemporary philosophy of science that has been welcomed by many realist philosophers of science. John Worrall systematically introduced this view, and others have developed it. The aim of this study is the investigation the relationship between the formation of the structural realism view and the diverse views of physicists regarding how reality is represented in scientific theories. In addition, it addresses the question of how John Worrall's structuralism developed from physicists' views on physical reality and the representation of reality in scientific theories.

Method of Study:

 The method of this article is conceptual analysis. In this article, we first deal with some cases of the history of physics and quote the opinions of some famous physicists about the realism or antirealism of scientific theories. In examining their comments, we will show how the two different approaches to scientific theories have been and how they have moved together .

It can be considered that, contrary to the ordinary view, which in many cases is assumed that philosophical theories emerge from controversy among philosophers, in this case, it can be seen that John Worrall's theory of structural realism is rooted in philosophical controversies among physicists. Through the comments of Henri Poincaré, John Worrall reached a solid and well-considered view of the realism of scientific theories, with which one can even answer some of the problems expressed in antirealism about scientific theories, especially the argument that Larry Laudan has made so clear and orderly, and even beyond that, we can absorb some antirealistic views in structuralism. The two famous arguments that he tries to incorporate into his theory are the «No-miracle argument» and «Pessimistic meta-induction», which we will partially address in this article. He chooses the path between the two views to introduce his structuralist view which, in his opinion, is well compatible with both of these arguments, and as a result, he wants to show that it is possible to remain realistic about scientific theories, in this sense that we can still maintain the claim that scientific theories inform about reality and show us the reality of the world, but in terms of structure. In summary, we will reach the following conclusions from the review of the opinions of some well-known physicists in the history of physics, as well as a more detailed review of the opinions of Henri Poincaré and John Worrall.

Contrary to the common view, which is considered in many cases, philosophical theories arise from disputes among philosophers, John Worrall's theory of structural realism is rooted in philosophical disputes among physicists; in the sense that the emergence of structural realism arose from a historical context, and had roots in the thoughts of some physicists, including Maxwell, Hertz, Boltzmann. The thoughts of these prominent physicists progressed step by step and led to the emergence of an implicit attitude about structuralism, which was more clearly expressed in Henri Poincaré, and then John Worrall, inspired by these ideas and especially influenced by the view Poincaré introduced his structural realism more coherently and showed that the continuity that we need in the changes and instability of scientific theories to achieve scientific realism must be found at the level of structures. By introducing structural realism, he reconciled two important arguments that did not seem to be easily compatible with each other, emphasizing continuity in the structure of scientific theories rather than continuity in content, and showed that there is continuity in the great body of science.

There is a fundamental psychological question of why and how human voluntary actions can be carried out. Some accounts of this question can drastically change many explanations and prescriptions given on man’s life in the different branches of humanities. Nonetheless, Islamic ethics and the training based on it more clearly need to provide a precise explanation as to the process of human will and action. Using an explanatory and analytic method, this paper first looks at the current views in this area, and then shows the superiority of Allamah Ṭabāṭabāī’s view over the alternative positions. His view relies on the psychological phenomenon of acknowledgement which he developed and analyzed in his work on philosophy of action. He gives an innovative account of the relation between the inner and outer worlds which satisfies the realistic requirements of Islamic ethics. Having certain advantages over other views, this account avoids voluntarism and relativism.

One of the famous divisions in the tradition of Peripatetic philosophy, rooted in Aristotle’s texts, is the division of wisdom into practical and theoretical, and Avicenna, in line with this tradition, introduces this division in his works. But the question of the nature of normative (moral/practical) propositions is controversial. Some commentators consider practical wisdom as belonging to practical intellect and non-cognitive and others, by accepting this belonging, consider it cognitive. There is no agreement in this second category: some claim that propositions of practical wisdom are based on accepted belief and the product of rational construction and the result of the dialectical method, while others consider these propositions to be the product of demonstration; so, they interpret practical propositions realistically. At the same time, practical wisdom is considered a field independent of theoretical wisdom. In this essay, after critical consideration of the first two views, the possibility of two types of realistic interpretations of the nature of practical wisdom from Avicenna’s point of view will be distinguished from each other: according to the first interpretation, practical wisdom is a field independent of theoretical wisdom and has its own principles; then, by criticizing this interpretation, the possibility of the second realist interpretation is defended. Accordingly, propositions of practical reason firstly have a cognitive aspect; secondly, are the result of demonstration and are mind-independent; thirdly, they belong to theoretical reason and are included under theoretical wisdom, in such a way that practical wisdom is dependent on theoretical wisdom in its principles and does not have its own self-evident principles.

This paper provides a critical and comparative study of two versions of scientific structuralism. After a brief introduction, in section 2, we review the key concepts in the long-lasting debate between realism and antirealism in the general philosophy of science; scientific realism is a positive and optimistic epistemic attitude towards scientific theories (and especially the non-observational aspects thereof). Two influential arguments around the above debate are introduced and briefly examined in section 3; the main disagreement between the realist and the antirealist will turn on whether or not the novel predictive success of scientific theories is in need of any explanation (especially through truth). In section 4, focusing on a classic paper by John Worrall, we will see that structural realism has been introduced as a middle and more balanced position in the realism-antirealism dispute: (theoretical) scientific knowledge only concerns the structure of the (unobservable) world. Although Worrall himself was not explicit in this regard, we try to provide a preliminary understanding of his notion of structure. The more elaborate and detailed formulation of Worrall’s structural realism based on Ramseyfication is presented and briefly examined in section 5. Possibly the most well-known threat to structural realism is an objection originally attributed to Max Newman: structuralism trivializes the theoretical (or non-observational) implications of scientific theories. In section 6, we provide an extensive treatment of Newman’s objection, before arguing that structural realism can successfully circumvent it. Bas van Fraassen, who seems to consider Newman’s objection somewhat detrimental to Worrall’s project, advocates an antirealist view called empiricist structuralism. The latter mainly originates from the fact that the vehicles of scientific representation are mathematical models and structures. The motivations for this view along with its differences from scientific realism are reviewed in section 7. In the penultimate section 8, we will note that empiricist structuralism too is not totally immune from trivialization objections of the kind raised by Newman and also Putnam. It is, among other things, these kinds of threats that lead van Fraassen to a nonstructural aspect of scientific representation: perspectivity/indexicality. In our final argument, we intend to show that recognizing such an aspect, though revealing in itself, is NOT sufficient for repelling trivialization threats, unless van Fraassen is willing to sacrifice his long-standing commitment to the literal construal of the language of science. We will end with a brief conclusion.